The article Nature Has a Formula That Tells us When it’s Time to Die by Robert Krulwich raised a lot of different opinions for me. First off, the thought of having a mathematical formula that can determine the life span of plants and Animals and possibly even humans seems a little over the top. Personally I don't believe that it is possible to determine the length of an organism’s life span. Like the article said, a human’s life holds a lot of chance within it. Sometimes life brings surprises and we never know what is going to happen next. This could be the same with animals and plants as well. Natural disasters can happen at any point and time, and these disasters can cause plants and animals to lose their lives as well as humans. Their lives hold just as many opportunities for chance as humans lives do. Second, the thought that our hearts have been given a certain number of beats until it expires is a little intense. Our hearts beat multiple times within a minute. When we do strenuous activity our heart rates increase. By the end of just one day our hearts may have beat over a thousand times, and at that rate it wouldn't take long to reach a billion heart beats. Another thought on this would be that  if we did only get a certain number of heart beats, wouldn't we be advised to slow ourselves down in order to keep our hearts beating slow like the elephants heart, rather than hurrying through the day and having our hearts race like a hummingbirds heart? This article does bring into thought that there are many other factors that play a role in how long an organism lives. For instance the "Chance" that I had mentioned earlier, as well as sicknesses and environmental aspects. Through technology and knowledge we have also lengthened our lives as well. We can now protect ourselves as well as educate ourselves on the many different aspects that can harm or even kill us. Throughout the years we have raised our chances from 1 in 2 to 1 in a million (this is an exaggeration) and have been able to give ourselves the gift of time. Something that maybe those who lived 100 or 200 years in the past wouldn't have been able to do. However, I have also thought about the fact that yes I may be wrong. Everything in this blog is just my opinion. I have no fact behind this and I didn't conduct any research to get this information. This is all straight from me and I do realize that there is a chance that I am wrong. Robert Krulwich could be 100% correct and our lives could have been designated for us like he mentions in his article. I also think that a lot of his article is based on opinions as well. He does have fact and probably did a little research his self but in my opinion I don't think that calculating someone or something’s lifespan is possible.

Source: 

https://lms.bvu.edu/section/content/default.aspWCI=pgDisplay&WCU=CRSCNT&ENTRY_ID=7AE7F8CFB2A047C3A449F9F9651ABABC